Best Week of the Program?

Well, the longest week (so far) for the MAC program came and went. Class on Mon & Tues wasn’t too bad (especially on Tues). The toughest part was the middle of the week. Over a 36-hour period on Wed and Thurs, I spent 25 hours at school. Parent-teacher conferences on those days went pretty well, as I met with three parents and felt pretty good about getting that experience. It was tough at first, especially since the students whose parents came in were solid C students who hand in all their assignments, but don’t talk in class too much. Because of that, there wasn’t much to talk about with the parents and I had nothing specific to say off the top of my head. After that, I can definitely see why people say you should prepare at least one complimentary thing to say about every student.

The best part of the week began as soon as I got home: the M basketball game against Clemson was great and scary as heck at the end too. Then, we spent Fri at Cobo Hall in Detroit for the MACUL conference. Initially, I was skeptical about all the stuff we had to do there for EdTech, but I am pretty comfortable with the tools we used and I thought both Twitter and the live-blogging was super helpful. Thanks to Jeff and Liz for the great opportunity. Also thanks to Rebekah, AFab and Brenda (super driving!) for the great carpool into the D. Lunch was outstanding and the company was hilarious. Good food, great time all around.

About MACUL: again, a great time. The WiFi was full of FAIL, but when it did work, it was fun to interact with other MACers throughout each session.

For the first session, I attended a PowerPoint seminar. It started out slow, but really gave some good tips about developing good PowerPoint presentations. A few bullets:

• Best font: Georgia, not Times: the Times font was developed by the NY Times for the express purpose of fitting the maximum number of words on a line to save paper.
• Information density: no more than 6 lines/slide and 6 words per line. More than that, and the reader needs to blink and becomes distracted by other thoughts.
• Place picture-only slides first, then on successive slides layer the text on top of the existing pics. Basically, this forces your content to be associated with that initial picture or figure.
• Related to that, I found this to be a great quote:

"Words can only recall images we have already seen."

The upshot: take advantage of or develop prior knowledge using pictures in your presentations and have the students describe what the pictures represent.
• Research shows that people remember more information if they are smiling while listening. To simulate this, try a cool trick: have all your students put pencils in their mouths during lecture. This simulates the smile response in the muscles of the face. Also, kids can’t talk and no one asks for something with which to write.
• Re: text color… when interpreted by the brain, blue naturally falls to the background. Yellow jumps out the most (this is due to humans evolving on a planet whose Sun is yellow & sky is blue). So, use yellow text on a blue background. Actually, the Sun emits more yellow-green that any other frequency of light, so try that on a light blue background.

• Finally, try using DVD-style wide screen slides (some call it old-school letterbox video format): you can fit more pics on one slide.


The next session promised to explain how technology could be used to save assessment time for teachers. Sounds good, right? Unfortunately, all they talked about were clicker response systems. Old news. Plus, all I could think of was Liz’s great idea to use cell phones and polling freeware from the web: same functionality with 100% less cost.

The last session I attended was definitely the best. A review of some of the most ingenious Michigan Virtual High School (MIVHS) courses such as the Mathematics of Baseball. Strangely, it was also had the lowest attendance (maybe a dozen, including the speaker, 3 existing MIVHS instructors and 3 MACers). They have entire online courses for phys-ed, science, sign language, drivers-ed and math. They described a theatre course with tons of interactive web tools. At the end, they talked about an awesome math course designed around baseball. The course was designed to fulfill the new Sr year math requirement in MI and deals with the dimensions of the field and the statistics of the game. I’d be really interested in developing an online course through MIVHS about the physics of baseball, or any other sport for that matter. What’s the best way to get that ball rolling? Apply for a job (on the to-do!) and exchange business cards (done!), I suppose.

One other thing I discovered Fri was this great web tool that helps teach math and science: “Gizmos.” Here's an introduction.

Overall, an A+ week!

LIVEBLOG from MACUL!

ZebraPhysics

There is a website. I made it for class!

http://zebraphysics.synthasite.com/

If you have time, feel free to click around and let me know what you think. Any suggestions? Anything missing? Any issues you think might come up?

Also, let me know if you are setting up a website for the semester...

Thanks to Laura K. for broadcasting the synthasite on her blog!

Physics Education on the Interwebs

So I've been scouring the intertubes trying to vet resources for good physics content. I've found too many, I think, because I don't know what to use or how to use it. One blog that really has good info is hippocampus. Here, I found links to a few sites that run some great simulations. One I already knew about was Phet. The second was hippocampus. The third was the Physlets. They all have great stuff, but how should I use them? Too many options! HALP!.

Hello World

Here's Alexander:



The birth was all natural and Jennifer was amazing. Thanks to everyone, especially our CNM Lisa!

Usage Wars

I found this article about the EL usage wars. We discussed this a little in Diversity class... but thought this was a pretty good, balanced article. Plus, it has to be the most entertaining review of EL usage, evah. The short story: the author (David Foster Wallace) has an interesting writing style and is basically a pragmatic prescriptivist regarding proper EL usage.

DFW: Tense Present

Graduate at 16?

Early Graduation

The article linked above describes an interesting idea. New Hampshire is developing a set of rigorous tests for 10th graders that would allow students to graduate and move on to vocational or community college by age 16. Some argue that it could be a solution to the 'crisis' that the U.S. is falling behind other nations in education. While I'm not sure how early graduation would help international competitiveness, I could see how this may help some students who may explore early college or vocational options. I'm also a little unsure about how it would save money if the schools have fewer students. In any case, I thought it was an interesting article so if people want to comment please do!

Baby News

I know many of you are looking for updates on the baby. Well, everything is going well, but Jenn has developed some symptoms of preeclampsia, so our outstanding nurse-midwife Lisa took Jenn off her feet for the last few weeks of the pregnency. We went up to U-M hospital for an ultrasound screening/biophysical analysis and all is well. I'll send out an email to the group when any news hits, so if I'm absent for a day or two, expect a brief email update.

2008: Great Year or Greatest Year? (Warning: Political Content)

What a year! I mean, except for the whole economic downturn and all. Election, Olympics, SMAC, election, SMAC , election, election. A few quick comments about the discussions from this week: Breakfast was mmmmmm good. It was a really exciting day Tuesday and also Wednesday after the election. First, the gay marriage thing came up (AKA, Prop 8 in Cali). I still don't get it. Just let them get married. It doesn't affect anyone else but the people involved. And why does the government have to specifically exclude a certain group of people? Some say that anyone can have the same visitation rights and tax benefits as long as they just don't use the word marriage. Fine, then rename everyone's marriage cert. a civil union cert. and let the churches call it whateverthehecktheywant. Also, why does the church have ownership over the word marriage? I just get the sense that if gay people getting married civil unioned makes you uncomfortable about your marriage civil union, then that is not a 'gay' problem, that is a 'you' problem.

Another thing that came up is the 'he's not my President' convo. I have to say that I've never been impressed with GWB. I was beyond shocked when he won the nomination in 2000 over McCain and others. He never seemed to express opinions and/or knowledge very well. Essentially, he was Joe Sixpack before Caribou Barbie came around. Some people like to think that the image he projects to the media (or when he talks, period) is due to a lack of charisma or not being comfortable speaking in public. I don't buy that. Al Gore had zero charisma in 2000, but he could communicate his understanding of topics at a level that did not require 3 second pauses to search for words like 'good' or 'decider.' It was the same in 2004 with John Kerry, who has never been accused of having charisma.

Most politicians have spent their entire lives in public service thinking about and dealing with issues that come up in debates and press conferences. GWB? Not so much, apparently...IDK. When one has a deep understanding about a topic, they feel confortable discussing it and answering questions about it on the fly. When you don't spend your entire life thinking about and studying issues like economics or international relations or domestic policies, you don't develop the same level of knowledge. What's the result? Alaska being near Russia means you have foreign relations experience. War is hard work. So yeah, do I want a Joe Sixpack or a soccer MOM in the White House? No, I guess I have higher expectations for a POTUS or VP.

That being said, he's my President and he's been so for 8 years. But did I (only half jokingly) say I'd consider moving to Canada? You bet (but honestly, part of the reason is that Canada is awesome). So what does a conservative/republican do? You can suck it up, stay and vote for change while respecting the office of the President like I did, or GTFO. Don't worry though, it will only be 8 long, excruciating years. Except without a new war, a Patriot Act, useless tax rebates, a $10T deficit, torture and world wide disrespect. Actually, I guess that wouldn't be so excruciating.